


The Buzz of the Billywig

by myth_taken



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-26 20:14:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1701122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myth_taken/pseuds/myth_taken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luna finds a Billywig far from home- so what else to do but return it to Australia? Of course, she can't just Apparate... she's got to fly in a Muggle airplane, and why not stop a few places?</p><p>Continuation of the Harry Potter canon from Luna's perspective.</p><p>Title subject to change.</p><p>[i love this fic and i wrote it ages ago but i still mean to finish it it's been almost two years i'm sorry]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Escape

There was an unusual buzz in the air.

Or perhaps that was only the voices of thousands of students worrying about exams and grades and so many other trivial things. 

No, that was a buzz. Wrackspurt, possibly? No. A Wrackspurt didn’t really buzz until it was in your head, and Luna didn’t feel any more disoriented than usual. Billywigs? But billywigs only existed in Australia… still, there was a chance. They were the only other magical creature Luna knew of which buzzed. But... well, there was a way to determine once and for all. Luna plunged her hand into her pockets and took out a pair of Omnioculars. They had been given to her by Ginny Weasley after the Quidditch World Cup, and she hadn't let them go. Raising them to her eyes, she twirled the slow-motion dial. Soon enough, she could see a bright blue creature flying back and forth in front of her. Its wings were twirling lazily in the air, although in real time, of course, its wings were cutting through the air faster than a hummingbird’s.

“Hello,” Luna said. “You’re not in Australia.”

More buzzing.

“I wonder who brought you here. Somebody must have." She reached out a fingertip, hoping the Billywig would land on it.

More buzzing, at a far greater frequency than Luna was perceiving through her Omnioculars. She thought for a second, then said, “Impedimenta!” while waving her wand at the creature. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll take you back, but I have to finish my exams first.”

Although she wasn't sure if she really wanted to finish her exams. Hogwarts was quite boring, now there weren't battles happening all the time, and Luna wanted to do things that didn't need N.E.W.T.s. She wanted to explore, to find the animals no one believed in, and she wanted to find someplace better to go. Hogwarts wasn't the right place for someone like her, not really. There was a lot of judgement and regimentation, and that wasn't her sort of thing. She needed to find her place before worrying about schooling. Anyway, Harry Potter hadn't finished his seventh year, and he was an Auror now.

Luna regarded the Billywig. It really did belong in Australia. Most Billywigs never saw any other land. There wasn't a legal way to get it home without dealing with the fledgling ministry; all transport of foreign animals was strictly monitored. Still, Luna felt a bit like having an adventure.

\--

Luna placed the Billywig carefully into a jar and shut it into her trunk. That Saturday was a Hogsmeade weekend, undoubtedly meant to take the students' minds off of the impending exams. She could go down, Summon her trunk, and Apparate back home, where she wanted to pick up some Muggle clothes and non-Hogwarts robes, and she had to say goodbye to her dad. He wouldn't mind her going off to explore, she knew, but he would mind her going off without telling him.

\--

The plan worked perfectly. She had told Ginny what she was doing, just so someone would know, and Ginny hadn't understood, but she had pretended to. Ginny was the best person Luna knew for pretending to understand Luna's oddities. They walked to Hogsmeade together, Ginny excited about meeting Harry Potter in the Three Broomsticks, Luna excited about leaving Hogwarts.

"I'm not very sad. That's not wrong, is it?"

"I don't think so," Ginny responded. "If you're done with it, you should go."

"I'm done." Luna had a conviction in her voice she'd never heard before.

"I'll come with you to the Shrieking Shack," Ginny said.

"Aren't you meeting Harry?"

"He can wait.” Ginny had a familiar sort of steel in her eyes. "I'm coming to see you off."  


Soon enough, they were at the Shrieking Shack, where Luna planned to disappear. Few people ever went near there once their initial curiosity had been sated, and by the end of the school year, everyone’s initial curiosity had been sated, so Luna knew she could count on it to be relatively deserted, and she was right. No one was there, presumably having preferred the sticky sweetness of Honeydukes She cast a complicated variation of a Summoning Charm to retrieve her trunk from the dormitories. It appeared in front of her, and she grabbed the handle. “Goodbye, Ginny,” she said.

“Bye, Luna!”

Luna smiled. "I'll be back sometime," she promised, then, gripping her trunk in one hand and her wand in the other, she Disapparated. 


	2. In Between

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luna finds an airport.

She didn’t need much from her house. Her dad wasn’t there, so she left him a note-

_I won’t be back home from school. I’m off to find a home for a Billywig. It was lost._

_-Luna_

Her dad would surely understand that. He shared her love of magical creatures, and he would shudder to think that a Billywig was just flying around without a home.

She rushed to her room, her trunk obediently floating behind her. She found her most ordinary Muggle clothes and her favorite purple robes and packed them into her trunk, pulling anything with the Hogwarts emblem on it out. She wasn’t a student anymore, and she didn't particularly want to be labeled as such. She also grabbed her father’s Muggle credit card- she never quite understood why he had it, and it might come in handy. He had a few more lying around, and she thought there was even quite a bit of money in the bank for some reason or another.

Leaving the house, she realized she wasn’t sure how far it was possible to Apparate. Could she go all the way to Australia? It seemed a bit far. Perhaps it was best not to stretch it. She wanted an adventure, anyway. It would be more fun if she didn’t Apparate the whole way.

Of course, that would require finding other transportation.

Perhaps she could try an airplane. She didn’t know much about airplanes, just that they managed to float without Wingardium Leviosa or any other sort of magic, but she also knew that they worked. It would be an interesting experience.

Where did one find an airplane? She could ask Arthur Weasley (he only lived a few hills away), but then he’d want to know why she wasn’t finishing her exams. He wouldn’t understand.

The only real solution was to go down to the village and ask.

She walked to the village, lugging her trunk behind her. She was sorely tempted to at least levitate it, but she was afraid Muggles would see. She resolved to Apparate to the airplane.

When she got to the village, she poked around for a shop. People in shops were usually helpful.

She quickly found a tiny little store selling handmade items. There were scarves, flutes, shirts, jewelry, and a whole host of other things. Luna almost tripped over a shelf of teapots making her way to the counter. "Excuse me, sir," she said to the man at the counter, "but would you please tell me where to find an airplane?"

He regarded her for a long moment, then said, "You mean airport?"

"Is that where they keep them?"

The man completely disregarded her question. "Exeter Airport."

"Can you tell me where that is?"

The man took out a shiny hunk of metal, cleaved it in two with his fingers, and began drumming his fingers on the bottom bit. Luna peered interestedly at the object, trying very hard not to appear nosy. There was some sort of light coming off it, and it was all different colors. There were words and pictures, all in a dynamic jumble.

"What is that?" she asked, still peering curiously at it.

He paid no attention to this question either, but he looked away from the metal thing long enough to scribble an address with an odd wooden cylinder. Luna thought it was best not to question that; this man was not very good at answering questions properly.

"Thank you very much," Luna said, taking the paper, and she walked out of the shop. She decided to Apparate to the given address, as she didn't really feel like walking.


	3. Airport Struggles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luna finds a flight to Australia.

The airport was big and noisy and just generally too loud. Luna didn't know where to go. She didn't know what to do. She couldn't find anything! She found a counter with CHECK-IN written above it on a big hanging sign. She waited in line for a while, looking around at her surroundings. It was dim, and the ceilings were to low. There were a lot of people, all in a hurry. The floor was a dark color, kind of muddly. Luna didn't really like it. The crowd and the dimness made it seem too small.

Once she got to the front of the Lune, she was confronted by a tired-looking woman with LOUISE written on a badge on her chest. Luna assumed this was her name. "Hello, how may I help you?" she said, her inflections reminiscent of a sentence, not a question.

"Could you tell me which airplane is going to Australia?"

"Where in Australia?"

"Oh, that doesn't matter."

Louise drummed her fingers on a surface in front of her. It was remarkably bumpy, and it seemed to be made of something that wasn't usually found in nature. Assuming it was another strange Muggle device, Luna leaned in to get a look, but Louise blocked her by waving a hand in Luna's face and saying, "Flight to Sydney. Makes two stops, one in Paris, one in Beijing."

"Oh, I've never been to Paris before," Luna said. "Is it nice there?"

"Do you want to go to Australia or Paris?"

"Oh, Australia first, please. I've got a Billywig to return."

The woman's fingers drummed on the surface again.

“What is that?” Luna asked.

The woman ignored her. This was becoming something of a tradition for Luna's Muggle encounters. "What class?” the woman asked.

“I quite like Charms.”

“Economy, First, or Business?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter.” Luna looked around for something to say. “This is a nice airport.”

The woman looked her up and down. “You want to pay lots or a little.”

“Oh, I don’t think I have lots. I’d better go for a little.” Luna fished her dad’s credit card from her pocket. “Do you need a credit card?”

The woman looked at her with an expression of pure exasperation.

“I suppose that's a yes, then.” Luna gave the woman her dad’s credit card. She felt herself rise onto her tiptoes like she always did when excited.

The woman swiped the card. “There you go. Flight 283. Leaves in a few hours. Two connecting flights, keep your boarding pass.” She waved her arms at Luna as if fending off a Wrackspurt, then called, “Next?”

“Thank you very much,” Luna said. She wandered away to where she thought she ought to be. She soon stumbled across a very long line, with a sign in front saying SECURITY in huge black letters. She wasn’t sure she was supposed to be there. Security usually meant important people, and Luna wasn’t really important. She tried to turn around, was blocked by a family with lots of suitcases, and decided she must be in the right place, if this family was here. There was a high chance that they were also flying somewhere. “Are you flying somewhere too?” Luna asked, trying to sound polite.

“Berlin,” one of the women said. “You?”

“Australia, for now,” Luna said.

“Ooh, you'll love that,” the woman said.

“I do think I will.” Luna paused for a few seconds, trying to think of another topic for conversation. “I've never been on a plane before. Is it nice?"

"It's great!" one of the kids enthused. "You go up, and you get really, really high, and then you get to be above the clouds!"

"Unless you're in the clouds," another kid said, a repulsed look on her face. "In the clouds is no fun at all.”

"But that doesn't last long," the third kid promised, his face filled with excitement. “And then you're in the sky!”

Luna nodded. “It sounds quite nice.”

"Good luck," the second woman said with a chuckle.

Luna turned back around. No one had asked why she was in this line, so she decided she may as well stay in it.

There were signs telling her to have her shoes off and suitcase ready to put in bins. She didn't have a suitcase; just her little bag. It had an Undetectable Extension Charm on it, though. There was a possibility of the Muggles acting oddly to that. She wished she had thought to change into Muggle clothes; she hadn't even changed out of her Hogwarts uniform in her haste to leave. Hopefully, the Muggles would ignore her blatant witch-ness. They did have a tendency to be quite unobservant sometimes.

All this managed to run through her head in the thirty seconds before she reached an attendant asking for her passport and her boarding pass. Luna didn't have a passport, but she was certain she could make this woman think she did. There were advantages to having magic. " _Confundus_ ," she whispered. "Haven't you already done that?" she asked the attendant.

The attendant nodded. "Of course, of course. Move on through."

Luna hoped she was smiling politely as she moved past the flight attendant to a space with lots of… the Muggles called them something. Something with a C. Conveyance beams, maybe? They were lots of flat things made of another weirdly unnatural material moving on top of a larger, less flat metal thing. The flatter bits were moving a bunch of bins through a little metal house, and the bins had bags and coats inside them. Taking the cue, Luna put her little bag and her black school shoes into a bin, heaved her trunk on, then looked around for the next step. She saw a few people in line in front of a thing that seemed designed solely to cause discomfort. It was a capsule, almost, and it looked like people were just standing in it for a couple of seconds before being waved out by another Muggle. Luna couldn't imagine why this existed, but she figured she may as well go along with it.

When she was about to step in, an attendant stopped her. "You're wearing a coat."

"I am?" Luna asked.

"What do you call that?" The attendant indicated Luna's robes.

"My robes. I'm not wearing much under them."

The attendant had a skeptical look.

“It's sort of a costume,” Luna lied. “A witch costume.”

“Fine, fine, go on through,” the attendant said, clearly not eager to discuss Luna's garments.

"Thank you." Luna stepped into the capsule, watching still another attendant on the other side for a cue as to when to leave it. She was waved through. On the other side, she found the bin with her bag in it. She took the bag, glancing around at the person who seemed to be examining luggage to be sure they hadn't found an issue. They hadn't, apparently, so Luna put her shoes back on, wishing they weren't her boring school shoes, and made her way to the boarding area.

Once she got there, she was immediately aware of the fact that the screen displaying flight details didn't yet display the flight to Paris. Luna vaguely considered being worried about this, but it didn't leave for a few hours, according to the bit of paper in her hand. That was probably how all airports worked. She sat in one of the leather chairs to wait.

Lots of people were coming into the boarding area. Some of them seemed annoyed, some of them seemed excited, and all of them were in an odd state of bored anticipation. Luna supposed that was normal, too. She didn't quite understand Muggles.


End file.
